What do you like best?

The first great thing about OutSystems Agile Platform is that it make everything easy. By removing the standard-but-trickier part of all websites/apps, it allows the development team to focus on the real issues. And instead of watching pages and pages of code, there are modular blocks of operation that are quite easy to understand, but anyone can add the old-fashioned code if they like or have to.

The second best part is that OutSystems controls its product like few companies do, and offers bootcamps and a single online community so that everyone can start working by the book and reach all the pros in no time. You can do it on your own to start, or you can jump into the the professional version and see architecture recomendations, design and usability, server performance and everything else.

No need for any particular set of skills to do a full stack application. It can be a one person job, or a full team working on the product. As long as they follow the Agile methodology, the final product can't go wrong.

What do you dislike?

After working in OutSystems is hard to go back to other tools, and that includes doing extensions (C#/Java) to connect Agile Platform to external libraries.

And while debugging the native quality rules (like the use of transactions) may cause problems to developers not used to good code. It takes a while to correct bad habits.

Recommendations to others considering the product

You can give it a try online and free. That will be enough to convince most of the non-believers.

What business problems are you solving with the product? What benefits have you realized?

By working in the fast moving consumer goods, the issues are diverse. We solved problems of Human Resources, Sales, Marketing, Quality, Logistics... Most applications are for internal use, but they are business critical and the business is very flexible (and applies to several countries). We are having the best time to market ever.

What do you like best?

DEBUGGER! ... is simply the best I have ever seen! I find errors in my LOGIC super fast!

What do you dislike?

Honestly, the big reason why I chose OutSystems for my firm is because I've not found anything that I truly DISLIKE. Trust me, that is hard to believe. I know, I can't believe I am saying this. For 25+ years as a technology leader, I've waiting for such a platform. It's now REAL.

Recommendations to others considering the product

Kick the tires in the FREE "Personal Environment" ... it is the perfect test.

What business problems are you solving with the product? What benefits have you realized?

I am starting TWO new companies at the same time. The ease of re-use across the two companies has been incredible. We are building B2B and B2C apps for the employee benefits and healthcare finance markets.

What do you like best?

Speed of development and ease of integration with existing platforms. As someone who has spent a career in IT, but never been a "developer", I was able to create a fairly complex application that seamlessly integrates with our existing databases.

True Change is pretty amazing - you make a change in one place and it corrects it in other areas of your application.

What do you dislike?

The software usage in the pricing model is a bit difficult to understand. Forecasting the software usage/consumption of a new project is not easy to do.

The support forum is a user community. While it is a great resource, if it is your only means of finding an answer to a problem it can take too long to get an answer.

Recommendations to others considering the product

Sign up for a personal environment and do the online tutorials.

What business problems are you solving with the product? What benefits have you realized?

We replaced a paper volunteer application with an online version. The time required to complete the application was reduced from days to hours. As a non-profit that needs more than 1,000 volunteers per year to staff our mission, this was a huge step forward in our recruiting process.

What do you like best?

As a old-time c# coder I love the fact I can focus on solving business problems instead of technical issues. I have no worries about dependencies and low-level stuff. Furthermore the TrueChange is awesome. I really have no trouble to refactor, move methods around and clean up stuff. Maintenance is fun as well. The new features in P10 is very welcome for the mobile department as well as the desktop environment.

What do you dislike?

As a lowcode platform it lacks certain flexibility, but those are only edge cases nowadays. Ofcourse the versioning could have some loving by check-in comments but it's all in the nitpicking categories.

As long as it don't evolve in a old-school IDE i can manage most of the dislikes.

There is no perfect tool and there never will be.

Recommendations to others considering the product

Embrace the change and don't be afraid you are boxed with this tool.

It's hugely dynamic and you can still use c#/java if you really really need to.

Upgrades are a breeze and every new major release will surprise you everytime!

What business problems are you solving with the product? What benefits have you realized?

All sorts of business problems, from invoicing, webshops and plain websites. The speed of change and flexibility is the biggest benefit. The easy of refactoring datamodels and simple yet effective way of implementing security measures is a big plus.

Customers see how easy and fast changes are implemented and are very happy with it and are becoming more active in the development itself instead of waiting in the backroom to see what it has become.

What do you like best?

Where do I start? The ability to develop and deploy the full stack quickly and easily is second to none. In addition, the platform TrueChange tab allows you to find where all of your obvious bugs are, and won't even allow you to publish until they all are resolved, making sure that the simple mistakes won't be detrimental to your application. Recently I've been heavily developing in platform 10, and the mobile and offline capabilities of this version are tremendous.

What do you dislike?

The primary issue that I've had with Outsystems is the lack of powerful advanced data grids. The grids are okay in taking care of basic to intermediate needs, but if you need something with the power of KendoUI, you need to go elsewhere to get it.

Recommendations to others considering the product

It's a niche product because it isn't free, but if you have enterprise-level projects for desktop and mobile and want one code base, I would highly recommend Outsystems.

What business problems are you solving with the product? What benefits have you realized?

We have a very small development team, and we've been able to successfully manage all of the needs much better than we could with any other platform. Outsystems allows us not only to develop and deploy very quickly, but change orders and bug fixes are EXTREMELY easy. I've loved that aspect of the platform almost more than anything else. It has been possible for us to be able to keep our IT costs down with fewer developers, yet still deploy quality products in a timely manner.

Learning about OutSystems?

* We monitor all OutSystems reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. Validated reviews require the user to submit a screenshot of the product containing their user ID, in order to verify a user is an actual user of the product.